Pułapki prowincjonalizmu. Przypadek ks. Benedykta Chmielowskiego

Abstract

In the mid-eighteenth century, Priest Benedykt Chmielowski, parson of Rohatyn and Firlej, published in Lviv the encyclopedia known as Nowe Ateny [New Athens]. In his endeavor to impose a form of encyclopedia articles on information about the world found mainly in written sources, Chmielowski accomplished a task impossible for many of the contemporary intellectuals. Critics of Romanticism and their heirs sentenced the work of provincial parson to forgetting, while erudites of Enlightenment, paradoxically, appreciated it. Today, from the perspective of Polish cultural history, one can view differently both the intentions and effects of Priest Chmielowski’s endeavor. They can be interpreted, among others, in the categories of relations between provincialism and Europeanism.